On-line disciplines: Computer-mediated scholarship in the humanities and social sciences

Information Systems Journal

2003

Communication plays a crucial role in influencing our social life. However, communication has often been distorted by unequal opportunities to initiate and participate in it. Such conditions have been criticized by Habermas who argues for an ideal speech situation, i.e. a situation of democratic communication with equal opportunities for social actors to communicate in an undistorted manner. This ideal situation is partially being realized by the advent of the internet. The paper describes how an internet-based tool for collaborative authoring was conceptualized, developed and then deployed with Habermas's Critical Social Theory as a guiding principle. The internet-based electronic forum, known by its acronym GRASS (Group Report Authoring Support System), is a web tool supporting the production of concise group reports that give their readers an up-to-date and credible overview of the positions of various stakeholders on a particular issue. Together with people and procedures, it is a comprehensive socio-technical information system that can play a role in resolving societal conflicts. A prototype of GRASS has been used by an environmental group as a new way in which to create a more equal exchange and comparison of ideas among various stakeholders in the debate on genetically modified food. With the widespread use of the internet, such a forum has the potential to become an emergent form of communication for widely dispersed social actors to conduct constructive debate and discussion. The barriers to such a mode of communication still remain -in the form of entrenched power structures, and limitations to human rationality and responsibility. However, we believe that the support provided by the comprehensive system of technological functionality as well as procedural checks and balances provided by GRASS may considerably reduce the impact of these obstacles. In this way, the ideal speech situation may be approximated more closely in reality.

Section: Using the Internet To Support Habermasian Communication: Promentioning

confidence: 99%

From Habermas's communicative theory to practice on the internet

Heng

Information Systems Journal

2003

“…The group therefore required that the argumentation central to their collaborative report authoring be neutral and transparent, in the sense that all opinions would be represented in the final report and that all authoring processes leading up to the final report elements would be completely visible. In essence, what was required was functionality to produce dialogic texts, in which multiple authorial voices could be recognized [7].…”

Section: Technology Becoming a Tool: Coevolution Of Argumentation Roumentioning

confidence: 99%

Argumentation support

Aakhus

2006

Commun. ACM

“…Such a group report is an example of a truly dialogic text, in which not one, but many authorial voices are heard. These texts are not written with a single monotonic group voice, but instead reflect many different perspectives in the same document, while possessing enough structure to be comprehensible (Harrison and Stephen, 1992).…”

Section: Group Report Authoring: Grassmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Social Context Model for Discussion Process Analysis

Information Systems for Sustainable Development

Kleef²

2005

Computer-mediated discussion processes play an important role in achieving sustainable development. However, when part of authoring complex documents, these discussions have so far not been very effective. One reason is that in the design and application of the information tools supporting discussion, the social context is not sufficiently taken into account. We outline a social context model for discussion process analysis. The GRASS tool for group report authoring and the freeText tool for document review are authoring tools in which the social context of discussions is given explicit attention. Analyzing GRASS and freeText, we show how the model could be used to construct information tools that enable more effective discussions.